don't know calculus.
I don't know why the
quadratic formula is important.
I don't know what they put
in hot dogs or how
to make people like me,
and despite 150 hours
spent sitting in a classroom,
I still don't know anything
about chemistry.

But I do know how
to make coffee.
I know how to make
my best friend laugh.
I know how to properly
annotate a text (thanks
to my ninth-grade English teacher)
and I know what makes
rainbows appear.
I know why Simon Bolivar
said “Let's go, as fast as
we can. No one loves us
here,” before leaving for
exile in Europe, because I
know how it feels to live in
a place where no love exists.
I know that orchids are
the ugliest of flowers,
that's why I keep one in
my house at all times,
and I know why my grandmother
cried when I told her
I wanted to go into the arts.

I don't know if God exists,
but I know that morality does.
I don't know how to work
the Cylindrical Shell Method
or solve for the integral
of a power series,
but I do know how to
keep my seven-year-old
cousin from crying.
And I'd take that
over calculus any day.